Convention Update

Republicans canceled the program for the first day of the party’s convention in St. Paul, Minn., the first dramatic change caused by Hurricane Gustav. ... Headliners President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both called off appearances slated for Monday, and Ohio Rep. John Boehner, the House minority leader and chairman of the convention, raised the possibility that John McCain, the Republican’s standard-bearer, would deliver his acceptance speech remotely.

Boehner said the legally required business – approving the rules, adopting the platform and nominating McCain–would take place but “there would not be much beyond that.”

If the country is spared speeches by Bush, Cheney, and Boehner, the GOP will have finally done something in the national interest.

so is the McCain camp telling everyone that there will be no rhetoric and that they are planning on taking down, or trying to take down, all the political advertising they had planned.

The newsconference was pretty amazing. I have never seen anything like this ever. and by that I mean a natural disaster forcing something like this to happen to a national presidential nominating convention.

Good for McCain -- right now the coverage is all about Sarah Palin. To have Bush, but especially Cheney give primetime speeches would bring everybody back down to reality. "Oh, right. This is what we need to change." The lower the profile of Bush and Cheney the better for McCain.

I was reminded though, that McCain's birthday was one of the events that Bush did see fit to notice leading up to Katrina. Aside from reminding people about his age, it's probably not a coincident that McCain's birthday this year was glossed over by the VP rollout. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the photographs of Bush and McCain and the birthday cake from three years ago.

Delete me if you will, ban me if you will, but that is an absolutely disgusting attitude, TChris. Hurrican Gustav is a matter beyond politics, or our antipathy, however justifiably intense, to certain politicians. Show some decency and take this diary down. You can at least remove the odious remarks you included after the blockquote.

I don't know if you've seen that YouTube of Donnie Fowler making the rounds, but this post is almost as bad.

with the faux outrage...If you want to go with stupid comments, 'll match your Fowler with Karl Rove: "The Republicans can't seem to get a break with regards to August, when it comes to the weather." Is that making the rounds on youtube as well?

To answer your question, I don't see anything in Chris' post to do with Gustav. Arnold S. + many, many others have been bailing out from the convention for the past month. The Republican governors in the hurricane path are rightfully doing their jobs. Bush, Cheney, and McCain are obviously trying a cynical pander to rehab their post-Katrina images, and people are not buying it.

but what he said is HARDLY the same thing as what Fowler said, which is that the timing of Gustav is proof that "God is on our [the Dems] side." If there is a God, He doesn't give a d@mn about the RNC or the DNC.

But anyone who views a natural disaster as a good thing because it spares us from listening to scheduled speeches by politicians we revile has lost all sense of perspective. His or her sense of decency is also in question.

Defending this disgraceful post calls your sense of decency into question as well.

...the same sentence that states that Republican convention organizers canceled the speeches also mentions that this action was "the first dramatic change caused by Hurricane Gustav."

Other democrats have been videotaped laughing and crowing about the hurricane's potential to disrupt the RNC. I personally find that attitude appalling and not worthy of being hinted at, with whatever plausible deniability, on this blog.

about the hurricane leading to a convention change is a quote from a third party source. All TChris said was that if the GOP spares us speeches from Bush and Cheney--that would be good (I disagree--speeches from Bush and Cheney remind people what we're trying to move on from). He said nothing about the Hurricane. I had to look back at the post when I first saw Pol C's outraged blast to see if I'd missed something. I hadn't--Pol C misread.

It didn't sound bad at all to me because I read the Bush, Cheney cancellations as a cynical ploy for getting out of the convention, something that has been rumored for the past month, well before Gustav. Maybe if Chris had said Jindal, etc., I might have seen it your way.

Gustav has been steadily weakening well before making landfall- central winds down to 115mph- so I suspect we'll get most of the GOoPer bloviating after all, since its result will be merely bad instead of catastrophic.

ever slightly to the west of NO. We're going to get lots of rain and flooding. I didn't hear the winds were down to 115 anything. It's still a cat 3 hurricane. Very dangerous. Unless you live through things, don't downgrade, please, it's importance.

Because one meteorologist said that the worst case scenario for NOLA was if the winds shifted 30 miles East. So, even a slight shift to the West is very good news. Let's hope that shift continues to the West but in a way that the winds get weaker and that parts of Texas don't get whacked instead of NOLA.

Actually the Gulf should put up a sign "No Politician Allowed" The emergency workers will have more than enough to deal with. It drains manpower to just escort them around. They don't need a bunch of politician flocking down there for photo ops.

is getting more and better coverage by not being there. Very impressive press conference. Taking actions, not just talking about action, as he would have as the keynoter.

The GOP may lose impact by this, but it also may gain, or it may be a wash. Whether the levees wash away, after years of federal funding of repair work (and see the video on the previous thread for an expose of the problems with that), will have more impact than the convention.

from a speech by Bush -- I'm sure that is what on the minds of all the people seeking shelter right now, not to mention their friends & family like me. I've been up since 2:00 a.m talking with my mom & dad as they were evacuating NOLA (it took them 6 hours to drive the 83 miles from NOLA to the MS border) and being spared from political speeches at the RNC was exactly what we were talking about.

videos of Donnie Fowler laughing about when Gustav will hit and saying God must be on the side of the Dems, and of Michael Moore on COuntdown saying that this news proves there is a God up in heaven. What dolts. Is this any better than Falwell and Robertson saying God caused 9-11 to punish America for its gays and pagans? Actually, it's worse because we expect more of so-called Progressives. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

CNN ginned up that story abut a remote speech. It is not planned. They are going to do minimal business tomorrow at the convention from 3-5pm mountain then stop for the day. Anything after Monday is up in the air including the physical participation of both the nominee, McCain and Palin.

They chartered a plan to take any delegates from the 5 gulf coast states home that wanted to go. 12 took them up on it from LA.

They said they would brief the press every day but nothing after Monday was set yet. No political rhetoric would be spoken on Monday and they are trying to removing ads from tv and radio for tomorrow as well.

cancelling (or downsizing) the convention is the best thing for the republicans. Clearly, they do not want to be seen partying if another disaster hits NOLA or the region. They do not want the American people reminded of their outrageous disregard for the people of NOLA. But this is their modus operandi for the entire past eight years- let's not remind the people of what we have done. This is why a down-sized convention works for them. McCain's campaign is primarily based upon I'm not Obama. Clean and simple. Heavy focus on republican history and the replublican platform is not going to appeal to non-republicans in this election, I would argue.

To my mind, this is the first election in which the independents (inc. so-called Reagan Democrats) will actually decide the election. Obama has the AA, comfy liberal, college student vote- ie, the reliable Dems) and McCain has the die-hard republicans. The undecided, I posit, are looking to what will be done to fix the mess we're in. In this light, focus on the republican party obviously does not help the republicans because they created the mess. Hence, an underplayed convention could actually help them out- esp. after the success of the Democratic convention.

Basically the candidate who wins this elections is the one who makes it a referendum on the other candidate.

By basically moving the RNC out of the spotlight and letting the Palin selection die down, McCain will probably be able to put the spotlight back on why Obama is too risky within a week or so, and the less reminders of Bush/Cheney and the last 8 years, the better for them.